LONDON, Sept. 15 , 2015 -- Seven Chinese mainland universities and five Hong Kong universities ranked among the top 200 of the QS World University Rankings 2015/16.

According to the latest edition of QS World University Rankings released on Tuesday, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) retains the first place for the fourth year running, followed by Harvard, while the University of Cambridge shares the third place with Stanford University, and the fifth is California Institute of Technology.

Among the international top 20, the United States has ten universities, while five British universities made it into the top20, including University of Cambridge, University of Oxford (6th), UCL University College London (7th), Imperial College London (8th) and King's College London(19).

ETH Zurich of Switzerland, the only university that is neither from the U.S. or Britain, was in the top 10, ranked 9th.

New rankings showed that the sharpest rise in the top 15 is two Singaporean universities, National University of Singapore (12th) and Nanyang Technological University (13th), which is also the first time the two universities make the top 15.

Among the top 200, a total of 49 institutions are from the U.S., Britain has 30, followed by 12 Dutch universities and 11 German universities.

Seven Chinese mainland universities are among the top 200, with Tsinghua University at 25th, Peking University at 41st, Fudan University at 51st, Shanghai Jiao Tong University at 70th, Zhejiang University at 110th, University of Science and Technology of China at 113th, and Nanjing University at 130th.

Five Hong Kong universities also ranked among the top 200, including the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology(28th), University of Hong Kong (30th), Chinese University of Hong Kong (51st), City University of Hong Kong (57th) and Hong Kong Polytechnic University (116th).(Source - people.daily.cn)

The QS World University Rankings, published by British education company Quacquarelli Symonds, is one of the most widely known rankings of tertiary institutes worldwide.

Researchers measured universities in five areas. Academic reputation and employer reputation took up 40 per cent and 10 percent of the overall rankings respectively. Student-to-faculty ratio, proportions of international faculty and proportions of international students constituted 20 per cent, 5 per cent and 5 per cent of the final results respectively.

This year researchers added a new indicator, citations per faculty, which measures schools’ influence on academic research. This indicator contributed 20 per cent to overall rankings.

A total of 82 countries are represented in the QS World University Rankings this year, with the largest shares claimed by the US (154), UK (71), Germany (43) and France (41). Japan has 38 entries, Australia 33, China 30, Canada and Italy 26 apiece, Brazil 22 and Russia 21.

In Asia, the best university was the National University of Singapore, which ranked 12th worldwide. Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University followed in 13th place while China’s Tsinghua University was named Asia’s third best university, ranking 25th worldwide.

Below are the number of institutions by country in the Asia Top 100 2015/16: